Oh La Lauren

Latkes with a side of Grammar

This morning I woke up at 11 and made a pretty conscious decision to not touch any scholarly materials until after my latke party. So I went to the store and bought supplies, then made matzo balls—and though they turned out a little too hard, just the smell made me happy—and then made latkes. Which, as I found out, is a pretty arduous process. The worst parts: 1. Grating onions and 2. Hot oil splattering. Now I understand why Mom always requests my help when making them.

But it was nice to have all my friends come over. Though Alan was shocked when he saw the number of plates I put on the table (“I thought you said you were having 4 friends over!”), I don’t think we disturbed him too much. In fact, he even came over and talked to us, and noted how Christina was pretty AND brought chocolates, and how Alexa brought champagne that was not from champagne (false: it was real champagne).

So Brit, Annie, Liza, Vitalie, Christina, Iraz, Lara, Alexa, Charlie, Biki, and Stephanie, they all came. It was nice, we ate latkes and slowly reviewed some notes for our Atelier d’Ecriture exam tomorrow. It’ll be easy, right? I shouldn’t stress, right? Right.

Stephanie just arrived in Paris and Alexa, Charlie, and Biki were telling her about our experiences here. For some reason, I kept recounting the negative aspects of Paris to her. For some reason, I think I’m trying to shoot down her currently idealistic impression of Paris. I don’t know why I’m so stuck on the negative aspects! And are these maladies unique to Paris, or are they just the consequences of being a young person in a city for the first time?

Last night Showcase was pretty awesome. It took longer to heat up than Duplex—in the beginning, the music was not good and the drinks were too expensive. But around 2 things got good (maybe it took a while because it was Saturday night?). The people in the club were SO well dressed, jeez. Especially the guys. Iraz, Vitalie, Christina, Liza and I ran into Lexy, Lindsay, Jane and Karisa at the club so it was nice to have a big group! There was lots of fun dancing on the dance floor, sooo many cute guys…I had a lot of fun! And the space was magnificent, right under the Pont Alexandre III. But damn, Parisian nights can be cold.

What else…oh yes, yesterday I began the day by going to Pyramides to the Marc by Marc Jacob store. I ran into Sophie Mancall-Bitel (tridelt at Northwestern who I once had French class with). In the past, I thought it would be a weird slap in the face when I saw Northwestern people randomly on the street. In fact, it’s actually that familiarity that I miss!

Went to the Marc store, which had a line just to get inside. Bought a bright blue tote bag to carry my computer around in. All of the Parisian girls were walking out with this one tote bag in a dusty purple color—it’s very plain, but so Parisian in the muted color palette. I then walked over to the Place Vendome, which I’d never been to. I thought it would just be a square with a column in the center, but there was something very nice about it. Maybe it was all the luxury stores—Dior, Chanel, etc—lining it? I then had dinner with Lara, who I hadn’t seen in a while.

Alright, so, the itinerary of my week to come: Exam, Class, Exam, Paper/Class, Exam, Champagne, Rage, Rage, Rage, Rage, Rage, Pack, Fly.